Back on March 6th, a 35-year old father went to work like any other day; however, he never returned home to his family. Because of the allowance of events which led up to the fatal outcome on the morning of the 6th, Timothy Rivers will never be able to scare the boys coming to date his daughters; he will not be able to walk his precious angels down the aisle on their wedding day; he will not be able to teach his sons about cars, girls, and fishing; he will not be able to hold his wife in his arms again.
Timothy Rivers died because of a series of events that led to a tragedy, and now his parents and family have to bury him; all the while asking the proverbial question: why?
Why did he and his coworkers not inspect their tools?
If they did, why didn’t they see the damaged jack?
If they knew the jack was damaged, why did they use it?
Major incidents just ‘do not happen’, for they are usually the culmination of a series of events which lead up to the final result which everyone fixates on; if we remove one of the events leading up to the outcome, the ending can change.
Each time we decide not to inspect, we are making a decision to work unsafe. Each time we decide to work with damaged tools, we are making a decision to work unsafe. When we take a shortcut, we are making a decision to work unsafe. Each one of these decisions might not result in a disaster, but each one has the potential; combine them all together, and now your odds of something bad happening has just increased exponentially.
You have the power to change the outcome of events, and sometimes all it takes is just saying, ‘hold on; let’s do this right.’ Stop and take a moment to inspect and analyze what you and others are doing, and then make the decision to work safe; for when you SLAM the task, you might just change a family’s future without even knowing it.